


paint my spirit gold

by everqueen



Series: And then... light. [4]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, also it's just Soft, more visible bonds au!, taako does something nice for his husband
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 23:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16169138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everqueen/pseuds/everqueen
Summary: Taako does something nice for his husbandDay 3 of Taakitz Week!(title from "I Will Wait", by Mumford and Sons)





	paint my spirit gold

“Kravitz be _quiet_ ,” Taako hisses, turning around as much as the small vent allows. “This is a _reverse heist_ , you need to bring that noise level way down!”

“So, stealing,” Kravitz says at normal volume from behind him. “Why are we in the air ducts again?”

“I told you, we can’t be seen.” Taako keeps crawling, his knees complaining at the cold metal of the air ducts. Not much reason all these _goddamn domes_ should even _have_ air ducts, but there has to be somewhere for Carey to hide.

“You know I could just portal us into her office, right?”

“Wards, my man.”

“You really think she still has those up?” Even without looking, Taako can sense Kravitz rolling his eyes. The elf focuses, briefly, and the brilliant tangle of bonds between them flares, red most prominent, of course, although right now the yellow is glowing a merry sunshine shade, indicating his husband’s amusement. “When Lup and Barry portal into her office all the time to bring her to family dinners and such?”

“Whatever, bones,” Taako says, letting his eyes adjust to seeing past the bonds, a skill that slipped right back into place when their memories – along with the ability to see the bonds – returned on the Day of Story and Song. His bonds with Kravitz are thick and strong, almost as bright as his bonds with Lup for all it’s been so much less time.

(These bonds are untouched by the ravages of a pen wielded by a lost sister.) 

 

Briefly, Taako frowns down at one of his other unmarred bonds, the pale spring green coating his left hand and pulling away ahead of them, stretching across the distance to a well-known wrist, old before and after its time. He shakes his head, chasing the thoughts away, and tosses a grin back over his shoulder at Kravitz. “Ango and Magnus are distracting her anyway, it’ll be fine.”

“So that _wasn’t_ a real dog running around on the quad?”

Taako shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine, homie.” He holds up a hand, squinting down through the grate in front of him. “Aha!”

“Are you even gonna tell me why we’re doing this?” Kravitz asks as Taako Magic Missiles the grate and swings down into Lucretia’s office. He takes his husband’s hand and carefully jumps down, landing gracefully on the blue carpeted floor. The office is meticulously organized, with more paperwork than Kravitz has ever seen (which is saying something) piled on her desk, along with a distinctively mediocre triple coaster made of shells. There are a few other trinkets and some of her ever-present pens also on the desk, as well as several bookcases and cabinets set neatly against the walls of the room.

“You’ll find out,” Taako says with a casual wave of his hand, already opening one of Lucretia’s cabinets. It’s neat, with stacks and stacks of files and some familiar blue-bound journals. “It’ll be an uuuhhhhh, a fun surprise.”

“I’m  _instantly_ worried.”

“Naaah, it’s fine.”

“That means it’s definitely not.”

Taako ignores him, humming off-key as he pages through the journals. Content to watch, and in a vain effort for plausible deniability when whatever scheme this is blows up in their faces, Kravitz leans against Lucretia’s desk and smiles when Taako absently flips his braid over his shoulder, exposing the curve of the raven feather tattoo behind his ear.

“Hey, rabbit, help me out here. Don’t just admire the view.”

Kravitz laughs, joining him by the cabinet. “What am I looking for?”

“Cycles 83 and 72, I think,” Taako says, clicking his tongue as he thinks. “Oh, and cycle 9 probably.”

“You know you could have just asked,” an amused voice says from the door.

Taako shrieks and jumps about a foot in the air, the top of the cabinet knocking his hat off. Kravitz lets out a careful breath and lets his scythe disappear from his hand as Lucretia straightens up from where she’s leaning against the doorframe. Her golden eyes are wary, as they always are when she and Taako are in the same room, but she’s smiling.

Taako just narrows his eyes and pointedly turns his back on her, going back to the journals in the cabinet. Kravitz regards him with exasperated fondness and offers Lucretia a smile. Her smile didn’t fade with Taako’s snub, surprisingly, and she merely rubs a thumb around her wrist as she comes more into the room. Kravitz can’t see the bonds, not like the birds can, but Lup told him about what happened at Angus’s birthday party. Taako won’t talk about it, just as he won’t talk about anything to do with Lucretia, and Kravitz doesn’t push.

“Why is he looking for my journals from those cycles?” she asks Kravitz, eyes on the air between her and Taako. He knows she’s gazing at their bonds, however they may look now, but she sees him looking and refocuses in that familiar way he’s seen from all his new family.

“He won’t tell me.”

“Of course he won’t,” Lucretia sighs, but that slight smile is still lingering, her eyes distant still. She seems… lighter, somehow, than she usually does. “You’re messing up my filing system,” she calls.

“You messed up my brain.”

Rather than curling in on herself, Lucretia rolls her eyes, and Kravitz wonders if she was more like this on the Starblaster, before the relics and the wars and the voidfish. She hums absently, sharp golden eyes watching him watch her, and her hand drifts to her wrist again.

“I thought Magnus and Angus were distracting you?” Kravitz asks, when Taako merely burrows further into the cabinet, tossing journals every which way, and Lucretia seems content to watch them in silence.

“They tried,” she says. “Davenport has been teaching Angus illusion magic, did you know? He illusioned a fairly convincing dog out on the quad.”

“So it wasn’t real.”

Lucretia grins, her brilliant smile melting away some of those artificial years. “Well, that’s not quite accurate either.”

“Did you transfigure Maggie into a dog again?” Taako asks without looking up.

Her grin widens, her hand dancing behind her, fingers plucking at invisible strings. “He seems happy enough.”

“What the fuck is up with this filing system?” Taako groans, finally surfacing and wheeling around to face her. “I can’t find _anything_.”

Truce established, temporary or not, Lucretia joins them at the cabinet, staring down at the mess with a critical eye. “Cycles 9, 72, and 83?”

“Natch.”

She nods and kneels next to the mound of journals on the floor, gazes at it for a moment, and then plunges her hands in. A few seconds later, she pulls out three journals, flipping them open to reveal her neat lettering: Cycle 9, Cycle 72, and Cycle 83.

“How the _fuck_?” Taako demands as she hands him the journals.

She merely smiles. “What do you need these for?”

Taako just rolls his eyes and turns away, nudging the fallen grate out of the way as he goes. Kravitz opens his mouth to apologize, or something, but finds himself with nothing to say. Lucretia just shrugs.

“We’ll see you for dinner?” Kravitz settles on finally.

“Like hell you will,” Taako calls, but it’s a token protest at this point and all three of them know it. “C’mon, bones, we gotta collect our boys. Do you think Mango will be the alpha dog at his dog school or nah?”

“Try and make sure he doesn’t destroy those,” Lucretia says.

“Fuck you, Creesh!” Taako flips her off, very deliberately, with the hand coated in that bright, unmarred green, and she raises the hand with the corresponding wrist in response.

Kravitz shrugs again and hurries after his husband. Taako transfigures Magnus back from his dog form, a huge tan and black mountain dog, only after dinner. Angus spends most of the time apologizing for not distracting Lucretia for longer, but gets distracted himself when Taako plops an apron over his head and has him help cook.

Kravitz doesn’t find out what Taako’s planning until a few weeks later, when all the reapers have a rare weekend off.

His husband’s been skulking around, holding hushed conversations with his sister and Barry in Barry’s definitely-not-a-necromancy-basement-lab basement lab, communing with Istus and possibly Kravitz’s own goddess as well, trying dozens of new recipes that all seem to be very similar versions of potato gratin. Angus knows, almost certainly, fairly bouncing with excitement whenever Kravitz sees him, but he’s evidently been sworn to secrecy, and won’t tell Kravitz anything.

On this slow weekend, deep into fall, when the trees have mostly shed their fiery leaves and frost covers the ground every morning, Taako comes up the stairs with an armful of strange glowing stones, inscribed with runes that pulsate with an iridescent shimmer. He grins at Kravitz, that daredevil, cocksure grin that tells him his husband is going to break the world again, and waves him out into the yard. Lup and Barry follow, their hands full of papers, and the three have one last hushed conversation before Taako waves them away.

“Are any of you going to tell me what this is all about?” Kravitz asks, fondly exasperated again. Lup is grinning, not unlike Taako, and Barry has his excited science face on.

“Not a chance, Skeletor,” Lup says, tugging on one of Kravitz’s braids as she walks past him into the house.

“Just try and remember everything,” Barry adds, clapping him on the shoulder before he goes into the house as well, leaving Kravitz alone with Taako in the yard.

“What’s this all about, dove?” Kravitz asks, sitting on the porch steps while Taako mutters to himself and sets up the stones in a loose circle, watching them critically until the glow is to his liking. The air is crisp against his face as he inhales the cinnamon apple smell wafting from the kitchen, rising from the pie Taako had recently pulled from the oven. Finally, Taako seems to have them arranged as he wants them, and turns to Kravitz.

“Hey, uh, quick question, my man,” Taako says, tugging him up from the steps.

“Hmm?”

“Do you trust me?” The question is serious, more so than Taako usually is, and he’s looking up at Kravitz with uncharacteristically still features. There’s no judgement there, but rather a simple question.

“Yes,” Kravitz says, unhesitating.

Taako’s face splits into that brilliant grin again, and he pulls Kravitz into the middle of the ring of glowing stones. He positions Kravitz carefully, watching how the glow changes based on where the reaper stands, and Kravitz lets him poke and prod until he’s exactly how Taako wants him. Taako then stands facing him, still grinning, and takes a deep breath.

“This is gonna be rad,” he says, and then Taako begins to chant.

The stones vibrate and pulse in response, the iridescent light slowly growing in radiance in response to the strange syllables falling from Taako’s lips. Kravitz’s muscles lock for just an instant before he relaxes again, trusting his husband as the light swells. A few moments more and Kravitz can feel the divine energy pouring through the stones, Istus, perhaps, with quite a bit of unfamiliar energy entwined within it. Taako’s chanting reaches a fever pitch and then stops, abruptly.

For a moment, everything is still.

And then the light washes over them, the elf and the reaper, bouncing and reverberating between the stones like waves, growing in power and brightness until Kravitz has to squeeze his eyes shut, feeling Taako take his hands.

“Babe,” Taako whispers, and he can _hear_ the smile. “Open your eyes.”

Kravitz does.

And he lets out an extremely undignified shriek and falls down, pulling Taako with him.

“Oof,” he grunts as Taako lands on him.

“Not the reaction I was expecting, bones,” Taako says. “Did it work?”

“Taako,” Kravitz breathes, gazing up. He would ordinarily see Taako, beautiful elf, beloved husband, savior of the multiverse, and he still does. But now, he sees Taako through a haze of brilliant multi-colored light tangled between them.

Red dominates, shades of pink and scarlet and ruby twining through each other in a thick, vibrant rope connecting them, rooted deep in their chests. Kravitz touches his own wonderingly, feeling his newly beating heart right where the red rope attaches.

Red isn’t the only color. Far from it. Taako seems to be crowned in blue, the shimmering strings falling between them like Taako’s thick dark hair, cascading around his smiling face. Yellow glows around them, emerging from their arms and legs, one particularly strong web glowing from Taako’s gut to Kravitz’s. Purple strings dance between them as well, strong and bright, and Taako winks when he sees Kravitz notice that one.

And above all, surrounding them entirely, is a faintly shimmering, verdant green.

“So it worked then,” Taako says, helping a stunned Kravitz sit up. “Natch.”

“Is this what all of you see?” Kravitz says, barely daring to move for fear of hitting the hundreds, thousands of brilliantly colored strings between them. Now that he can focus a little more clearly, he can see other strings, ropes really, emerging from them both, stretching into the house, and towards the beach and Refuge and Neverwinter and even up into the sky.

“You learn to tune it out,” Taako says with a shrug, a softness in his eyes that Kravitz doesn’t see often, even now. “It’s not gonna stick or anything. You’re from a plane that isn’t built for it. But I just thought,” he shrugs again, looking nervous now. “I thought you might want to, uhhhhh… to see what I see, when I look at you.”

Kravitz smiles, feeling tears well up in his eyes, and cups Taako’s face in his hands. “Thank you,” he whispers, pressing his forehead against Taako’s. “It’s beautiful. _You’re_ beautiful.”

“ _We’re_ beautiful,” his husband corrects softly, swiping away Kravitz’s tears with one callused thumb. “I love you, Kravitz.”

“I love you, Taako.”

**Author's Note:**

> god i love writing for this visible bonds au
> 
> please drop a comment and/or a kudos but even if you just read it i'm still happy
> 
> thanks i love you bye!


End file.
